In wireless communications systems, wireless terminals can maintain connectivity to a base station without actively communicating with the base station. Such wireless terminals are referred to as being in a paging mode. In such a system, the wireless terminals (WTs) are paged by associated base stations (BSs) to initiate communications. In order to realize this, the base stations typically have a channel on the downlink called the paging channel. In prior known paging arrangements, the paging channel is subdivided into a plurality of paging time slots. A group of wireless terminals is typically allocated a paging time slot of a prescribed periodicity for receiving paging messages from associated base stations. As shown in FIG. 1, wireless terminals #1 and #2 are allocated to time slot A, wireless terminals #3 and #4 are allocated to time slot C, and so on. Each mobile unit is expected to monitor for paging messages from an associated base station during these paging time slots. Thus, in the example shown in FIG. 1, wireless terminal #1 and #2 only monitor time slots A and B, while wireless terminals #3 and #4 only monitor time slots C and D, and so on. To this end, the periodicity of the paging time slots is made sufficiently long that the each of the wireless terminals can effectively turn off most of its circuitry between two of its designated paging time slots and, thus, save energy. This is referred to as the wireless terminal entering a so-called “sleep” mode. The wireless terminal, even though in the sleep mode, still has to keep track of the received paging time slots. The wireless terminal is caused to “wake up” prior to the arrival of its designated paging time slot, tunes to the downlink channel and achieves carrier, timing and frame synchronization. Then, the wireless terminal decodes the paging time slot and if its identifier is included in the wireless terminal's designated paging time slot, it knows that the page message is meant for it. The wireless terminal then takes the appropriate action indicated in the paging message. If the paging message is not meant for the wireless terminal, the wireless terminal returns to the “sleep” mode, and monitors the next received paging time slot designated to it.
As seen in FIG. 1, more than one wireless terminal shares the same paging time slot. The rationale for this is that in general paging messages for a particular wireless terminal do not arrive very often, and paging messages for different wireless terminals arrive at mutually independent time slots. Consequently, sharing of the so-called paging time slots among several wireless terminals is a more efficient way of utilizing the paging channel. A problem of sharing of the paging time slots among several wireless terminals, however, is that latency in receiving a paging message is increased when several paging messages arrive simultaneously for the wireless terminals sharing a particular paging time slot. For example, consider that paging messages arrive in time slot A of FIG. 1 for both wireless terminals #1 and #2, then the associated base station can only transmit one of the paging messages in time slot A, for example, the message for wireless terminal #1. Then, the base station must wait until time slot B to transmit the paging message for wireless terminal #2. Depending on the arrival rates of paging messages and the number of wireless terminals sharing a paging time slot, the latency may become undesirably long.